Hey there. This is Jennifer Gonzalez for Cult of Pedagogy.
I am going to teach you this great strategy today called the Mind's Eye strategy.
Mind's Eye is a fantastic pre-reading strategy that builds student interest in a text
by having them create mental images before reading.
Research shows that proficient readers regularly create images in their minds while they read.
Doing so forms stronger mental pathways and makes information easier to retrieve later.
Mind's Eye taps into this principle.
Here's how it works.
Suppose you're a social studies teacher doing a unit on immigration.
You want students to read a selection from Peter Coan's book, Ellis Island Interviews,
a piece where a woman tells the story of her family's move to the U.S. from Italy.
Your first step is to choose 20-30 important, evocative words from the text,
words that will evoke strong feelings or images in students' minds.
Here are the words you choose from this passage.
Now before starting the lesson, explain to students that they are going to read
a woman's story about her family's move from Italy to the U.S.,
so they have some context to build on.
Next, read the words slowly and dramatically.
Instruct students to create movies in their minds of what they think will happen in the text.
As each new word is read, students should try to incorporate it into their mental picture.
When you finish reading the list, students will create one of four end products
as a way of processing their thoughts:
They can draw a picture based on their mental image,
ask a question or series of questions they hope the text will answer,
make a prediction about the text,
or describe the feelings their mental picture gives them.
As students work on their end products, you may need to repeat the word list again.
Next, have students share their end products in small groups.
This will show them all the different possible interpretations for the list.
Students will find that others focused more on certain words than they did,
and this sharing may result in students altering or refining their products.
Students then read the text independently, comparing it with their initial thoughts.
Then, as a class, in small groups, or independently, have students reflect on the process.
How accurate were their predictions? Did they like the end product they chose?
Would they choose a different kind next time, for example, making a prediction
rather than drawing a picture?
Once you've used the strategy several times, teach students how to use Mind's Eye independently.
Using a sample text, model how to skim a passage and choose words, create mental images,
make predictions about the text, and then read to see if your predictions were accurate.
Here are a few tips to make Minds' Eye work well for you.
First, choose words that are important to the text.
Avoid words that are likely to cause predictions that are way off base.
The point is to help them make good quality predictions.
Also, choose mostly sensory words -- words that will evoke strong imagery, sense, or emotion.
Second, pay attention to word order.
You might simply list the words in the order they appear in the story,
but be aware that words that come early in the list may take on stronger meaning in students' minds
than they actually have in the story.
Finally, if students have trouble forming mental images,
practice image-making with well-known objects.
Without using a text at all, do some sensory exercises where students imagine
eating a hot slice of pizza, holding a basketball, or sitting in the sun.
This strategy comes from Silver, Strong, and Perini's outstanding book, The Strategic Teacher,
which contains complete descriptions of twenty research-based strategies for teaching any subject.
If you enjoyed this video, take a look at some others in our fast-growing collection.
The Reciprocal Learning Strategy builds more rigor and structure into pair work.
Distract the Distractor is a low-tension way to deal with disruptive students.
And come on over to www.cultofpedagogy.com for a TON of other articles, book and technology reviews,
and honest, in-depth examinations of the factors that impact the work of teachers.
Thanks for watching and have a great day.